So-called roll containers are mainly used by retail chain stores for transporting food, cosmetics and basic commodities. A distinction is made between so-called non-nestable roll containers, i.e., roll containers that cannot be inserted one into another, and stackable roll containers. Non-nestable roll containers require considerable warehouse costs and are impractical to use. The dismantling effort (e.g., for return transport) is also considerable, and the damage rate for wheels and frames is significant, especially for containers transported upside-down.
Known nestable roll containers have a specially constructed base frame, in a trapezoidal shape of the bottom construction, or the shape of a “Z” or “V,” with these known designs enabling straight-line or lateral nesting.
Most known designs of nestable roll containers are relatively heavy-weight constructions, which emit considerable noise when rolling and are therefore suited only to a limited extent to modern conveyor technology.
EP 1777137 A1 describes a roll container that is constructed to be nestable with containers of the same type, which therefore can be inserted one into another. For this purpose, two struts arranged pivotably and bearing rollers are provided that can be pivoted relative to one another by an amount such that additional identically constructed containers can be inserted into the space resulting between the struts. The roll containers can be arranged in a space-saving manner in this way. The pivotable arrangement of the struts, however, implies a corresponding construction effort. Moreover, it causes a lack of stability, which is necessary for rough operation in a warehouse since damage to or defects of containers often occur.
To eliminate this disadvantage of the above-mentioned prior art, a stackable roll container is known from DE 10 2007 033 147 B4 in which the side walls of the roll container are designed in a special way to allow stackability without using articulated connections. For this purpose, the rear end strut of each of the opposing side walls is pulled, from a reference plane in which the front end strut is located, sufficiently far inward that the container can be inserted between the front struts of another container. The front end struts must of course have a clear distance between them that is not only larger than the distance between the rear end struts (measured in the width direction of the container), but is also greater than the width of the base. This container can also have a grid in the side walls that prevents products from falling out of the roll container. Corresponding longitudinal and transverse struts must be positioned in such a manner that nesting can still be guaranteed, i.e., in a lateral intermediate space parallel to the reference plane and delimited by the rear end strut or the front end strut.
It is disadvantageous in this roll container that the products can only be placed one atop another on the base of the container, so that is not easily possible to remove products in the middle of the stacked containers. The only known solution to this problem is to suspend intermediate bases from the grid of the side walls of such a container. For this purpose, however, the intermediate bases must be tilted or inclined relative to the horizontal plane and then brought into engagement with the grid by appropriate engagement means. Due to the necessary tilting, it is not possible to subsequently insert an intermediate base if no sufficient margin of vertical space is available, because the latter is limited by already loaded products or the next intermediate base.
The problem of the present invention is therefore to create a roll container that, with a simple construction, allows easy insertion of intermediate bases without the need for a large margin of space in the height direction of the container, so that a problem-free subsequent insertion of intermediate bases becomes possible. The invention is likewise based on the problem of creating an intermediate base that brings the above-mentioned advantages in connection with such a container.